Crypto glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms you'll run into. No jargon left unexplained.
- Blockchain
- A shared, tamper-resistant digital ledger that records transactions across many computers at once.
- CEX
- A centralized exchange (e.g. Coinbase) — a company that holds funds and matches buyers and sellers.
- Cold storage
- Keeping crypto keys offline (e.g. on a hardware device) to protect them from online attacks.
- DeFi
- Decentralized finance — lending, trading, and earning built on blockchains without traditional intermediaries.
- DEX
- A decentralized exchange — trade crypto peer-to-peer from your own wallet, with no central company holding funds.
- Dollar-cost averaging
- Investing a fixed amount on a regular schedule to smooth out the effect of price swings.
- FOMO
- Fear of missing out — the urge to buy after a price has already surged, often a costly mistake.
- Gas
- The fee paid to process a transaction on a blockchain like Ethereum.
- Hot wallet
- A wallet connected to the internet — convenient for spending, but more exposed than cold storage.
- Layer 2
- A network built on top of a base blockchain to make transactions faster and cheaper, while inheriting its security.
- Market cap
- A coin's price multiplied by its circulating supply — a rough measure of its total size.
- NFT
- A non-fungible token — a unique, blockchain-verified record of ownership of a digital (or linked physical) item.
- Private key
- The secret code that proves ownership of crypto and authorizes spending it. Anyone with it controls the funds.
- Seed phrase
- A list of 12–24 words that backs up a wallet. Whoever has it can restore — and drain — the wallet.
- Smart contract
- Self-executing code on a blockchain that runs automatically when its conditions are met.
- Stablecoin
- A crypto token designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged 1:1 to a currency like the US dollar.
- Staking
- Locking up crypto to help secure a proof-of-stake network in exchange for rewards.
- Wallet
- Software or hardware that stores the private keys used to access and move your crypto.